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Just figured out how to reverse it if you've played a game already. Go to the Google Dashboard, and under Account, you should see "Websites authorized to access the account", click that and disable the games. I have to say, at least they make it clear what you are accepting, and easy to opt back out later.

Yeah, it's also good to check that once in a while to see if you authorized something you forgot about, or to remove old apps you don't use anymore. Twitter was recently sending out spam because an old app people tried long ago was compromised and still had access to thousands of accounts.

Well said, Vovicon and antiproton. It's really annoying to see how many people want to complain about loss of privacy, but are not willing to sacrifice any convenience to do so.

On a related note, why is anyone surprised by this? What did you think Google Plus was going to be? It's better than Facebook because privacy is more explicit. They're still going to attempt to monetize it, and few things are more valuable than data about you.

"Based on interactions across Google" is incredibly ambiguous. While it may factor how often you email in the ordering, it'd just as heavily be affected by your interactions with them on +. A social game does need something like this ordering feature so it can help you play with people you actually interact with.

Let's assume that that's the case, and social games really need this feature. There's no reason the game has to know. The game could tell Google+ to send a message to the user's ten most frequently interacted-with friends, and never know who they are until they start playing the game. This is similar to how OAuth is used to permit a site to know who the user is without giving the site the user's password (e.g., Twitter clients don't get the user's Twitter password).

Google may be on the right track here. Transparency without interference leaves people responsible for their own privacy, rather than trying to babysit them.

Social media apps and games are rarely actually free, you're just typically paying for it in a different way than money.

That said, this term wouldn't be hurt by being a little clearer, and possibly with some kind of privacy flag to grab attention. I don't think the average user is going to understand what this means, let alone the implications of giving up that info.

The main problem I have is that the person's friends don't get to consent to this shitty information sharing.

Just because I have a friend who loves to play these games non-stop doesn't mean I want my information being shared with these companies. And not only my name, and the fact that I'm in her circles, but also how often she talks to me is a piece of information about me too. And none of those are things I have any control over.

I don't like privacy being invaded either, but never in your life have you been able to control what other people tell other people/companies about you (with a few exceptions).

Though to be fair, the technology has made it easier. Likewise, technology does offer solutions that would allow you to prevent other people from sharing this information so easily (though not prevent them entirely).

Has anyone checked to see if Google offers an option to opt-out of allowing other people from sharing your info? I wouldn't be surprised if they do. Or at the very least, it's a good thing to suggest. I wouldn't be surprised if Google is willing to add that kind of privacy option.

Hmm, that's actually a very good point, that would be a breach of the ideal I thought they were after since it involves others' info with only single-party consent.

What's really damning here is the "ordered based on your interactions" bit. This is vague.

What exactly is revealed about your interactions is important, though; this doesn't seem to imply they know the magnitude or methods of interaction, just the order based on the magnitude and type, enumerated. Also, that doesn't imply a two-way order--your best friends may not think much of you. Obfuscating (EDIT: or pre-digesting) personal info may be enough to allow apps to use info without giving away too much.

I can't imagine any way that they would maintain single-party data based on this, but to figure this out I think we need to delve into the availability of profile information to apps, and track where in the API this warning item comes from.

A brief search shows Google+'s API is not yet publicly available, so I don't know where else to go in trying to figure out exactly what is revealed in this bullet-point. Under this kind of scrutiny it definitely seems like this needs elaboration at least, and possibly some changes to protect non-consensual loss of personal information.

It is generated from the same data feed used to sort facebook chat's new sidebar (which now "guesses who you would like to talk to" based on your interactions with them). The booklet itself just mixes some javascript hackery and some jQuery magic, but I didn't come up with it: credit goes to thekeesh.com

After number 2, I'm not sure number 3 is the thing you should be most concerned about. She doesn't need to play silly browser games to invade your privacy by sharing something about you without your control. She could just go out on the street and do that.

This is where situational awareness comes in, which is why delegating this decision to a third party is dangerous.

Assuming (still within the hypothetical) you trust the woman, you're not too concerned about her illicitly meeting with a reporter and spilling the beans. It's a possibility, sure, but you can estimate the likelihood based on your relationship with the woman, and this can be a relatively low risk if you're careful about which woman you choose.

However, if she's your average Internet user, she will blithely click "OK" on any prompt that's standing between her and her PopCap games, often without even reading the terms wo which she's assenting.

You must be very cynical to assume that the makers of these games are really searching through the information of the countless players of these games, looking for certain important people and this potentially incriminating information (which, in most cases, wouldn't be incriminating at all.)

Do you understand what a "hypothetical" situation is? It's an example used to make the problem clear; you can surely think of other situations in which one would prefer to not disclose all of their social contact information without so much as a say so in the matter. If you can't, well, I pity your lack of imagination.

I still think you're overestimating just what these people could do with that information, and underestimating the scale of people using these games. It's not as if your friend is going to be the only person using this application. There will be countless people playing these games, and giving their information to them. They are not going to be searching through your information to find anything, one because it'd be a very time consuming task, and two because the information wouldn't be of any use or importance to them. All you are giving them is a list of names which mean absolutely nothing to them, along with some basic contact information that you could find through endless other means.

The game is simply using some of your basic information to make the playing experience more personal. If it were asking for access to say, the address and contact information for you and the people in your circle, then i'd see cause for alarm. Otherwise, all they have is a list of names which would be useless to anyone except the person playing the games.

The real problem is that as we've found out with Facebook, the majority of people are terrible at valuing the long-term real value of their personal information to marketers vs the short-term entertainment value of a game.

In my mind the intermediate party (Google/Facebook) should allow the game/app vendor to ask for the info as a "payment" of sorts, but not make the representation that it's required for the game to work.

Put the 'coin' cost right up front on the link and not the transition screen, so people can decide before they click. Alternately, the game can ask for a red coin to play the full game, or just allow you to see a 'demo' for free.

Unfortunately the way it's currently done is a lot like having a cashier ask you for your zip code at the store register (when it's totally unnecessary to ring up the sale). You feel more uncomfortable about backing out and saying 'no' than you do about giving up a trivial but valuable piece of marketing info.

In my mind the intermediate party (Google/Facebook) should allow the game/app vendor to ask for the info as a "payment" of sorts, but not make the representation that it's required for the game to work.

That's a nice idea for protecting consumers. Unfortunately, I think people will start to value this "money" more when it's presented as a payment, which will lead to a significant drop in the profitability of these markets, and significant profit difference between markets could easily kill an emerging social network.

I still think personal responsibility is going to win here for now. The network gets deniability, the app producer gets their money, and the consumer gets their app, and will never really see the repercussions.

It's not much different from years ago, when one would fill out a sweepstakes entry card, giving up similar info in return for a miniscule chance to win a prize.

The sum value of the data thus collected was more valuable to the sweepstakes organizer than the value of the prize. There was also more of a transaction cost at that time, whereas facebook/etc make the cost only a 'click' and then it's gone. Also, generally sweepstakes must disclose odds of winning so the consumer can properly evaluate cost/benefit of entry. When it comes to other things such as free magazine subscriptions, or filling out a form for a free t-shirt, the consumer can also weigh the cost/benefit - the benefit is clearly stated.

There is a problem with an app/game which makes a minimal representation of it's own value before asking for the 'fee' - like a sweepstakes that doesn't disclose that the odds are in fact 1 in 20 billion. The network has a vested interest in seeing the transaction go ahead, since the info is typically used for targetted advertising on the network - so I believe how they represent the transaction has ethical if not legal implications.

It's idiotic to blame g+ for this one and you keep putting this same comment everywhere.

Blame the game developer for trying to get that information, which they almost certainly don't need, and be happy that g+ is putting it right in your face that they're trying to get this permission. Don't blame them for building a decent API when other people use it like dicks. Maybe there is an unordered option and they didn't use it. It's not like this permission is required for all games.

From the way it is worded, it sounds like Google creates the list order and the game probably has no idea of the specifics. All they know is "this person is the most interacted with" and "this person is the least interacted with" based on some combination of unknown criteria from Google.

They're saying "play this monetarily free game in exchange for this information," and you're saying "yes, I accept those terms," or "no, I don't accept those terms." You want the option of "give me this game for free in a way that doesn't benefit the company making the game," which seems silly. Their "price" is the information. If you don't like that "price," then it's no different than saying "that game costs too much," and not playing it.

Name photo and circles, those I don't mind so much, plus they make sense for social/multiplayer games. But I noticed at least one game also requests your email. Email is usually not public in your G+ profile and I'd rather not give it to unknown third parties.
Fortunately most games I looked at didn't ask for this, but it's something to watch for.

I posted this because right now the only people who use google plus consistently are my tech friends.. and I'd much rather see g+ introduce more academic or tech-related features rather than try and emulate facebook.

Note that you said your tech friends already use it consistently? Google wants plus to grow, so that means it needs more features to attract the mainstream crowd. Why prioritize the people it already has, especially when that might turn off millions upon millions of untapped customers.

It's scary because it isn't just your G+ friends and information that they will share, it's your GMail contacts, email frequency, and any other Google account information they may have that is unrelated to G+.

Someone explain to me what the problem is here. It's a game requesting permission to view a list of people in your circles. Maybe I didn't sync with the hivemind on this one, but I don't see the problem.

There is no problem. Google does a way better job than Facebook at keeping the games separate from your normal activity. You won't see G+ friends relentlessly posting for help in mafia wars and farmville. There was no way google was going to opt out of tens-hundreds of millions of game related revenue per year. However, they are doing it in a way that is not anywhere near as obnoxious as facebook. They basically have a little button that you can choose to visit (or not).

I think people freaked out as soon as they saw the word games on G+ because of the Pavlovian conditioning that Facebook was responsible for.

The hivemind was under the impression that google + would be like fort knox when it came to privacy. So every time something like this happens, their hearts break just a little and they grab their pitchforks and torches.

Can you opt out of other people sharing your information for you? How much information is shared? What specific stats do they show? How much personal information is exposed? Does it show information i have marked as private? Does it show information someone else has requested that i have marked as non-public but visible to that person?

I would say that is the best solution. If a game-maker sees that no one is playing their game, but other games that do not intrude on the users privacy are doing well, they will surely be inclined to to make their games differently.

Actually... we will track them without their knowledge and then ban them from the internet. We will use something called cookies and they will never see it coming because how can a tasty snack be bad for you.

There are going to be apps which need that api in order to do their basic function, which the user is wanting from that app. It's better to have the api but allow the user to control it than not have the api.

I don't know. If you don't want information being shared, don't post it on the web. I don't like that a friend can expose your profile to outside developers w/ o your knowledge. Maybe there should be a toggle for that too. Social networks and privacy are inheriently going to collide, and often.

I don't think it exposes your actual circles. Even my wife can't tell which of my circles she's in. But, Google+ profiles are all public (right?) which means anyone that can find you can see all the people you have in circles and who have you in circles. Games don't seem to have extra privileges in this regard.

I would like to know more about how they order the list though, and what use companies can gain from that.

Someone explain to me what the problem is here. It's a game requesting permission to view a list of people in your circles. Maybe I didn't sync with the hivemind on this one, but I don't see the problem.

Supporting fine-grained permissions takes more work than supporting coarse-grained permissions, and that can't be high on the list of priorities for a product that's in early beta, if it's on there at all. Right now they're taking the same approach as with Android app permissions, which seems to make most users and most developers happy. If enough people ask for the feature, they'll probably implement it once they've addressed the more urgent development goals, so go ahead and hit that feedback button when you're on the permissions warning page and let them know you feel strongly about it.

What it needs is Option 3. "Have Google+ feed this app a bunch of bullshit data to shut it up. WARNING: If the game actually has a legitimate need for your circle data, choosing this option may result is degraded performance."

The reason they call it "social gaming" is because it has features like comparing scores with your friends. To do that, it uses personal data like who you communicate with. If you didn't already understand this, then you hadn't thought it through.

Google+ should be handling interactions with your friends instead of giving the data to the application. Similar to how you have to allow an app to access location data using Apple's pop up prompt on iOS, it would mean that access to sensitive data is better managed by the user instead of just clicking "allow" at this terribly worded screen.

Sorry you can actually expand it.. "View a list of people from your circles that you may want to engage with. The list is ordered based on your interactions with these people across Google. View public profile information for these people".

If you don't want a game to have access to your social contacts, don't link out to your social profile. Obviously that is something they're going after since its on a social networking site. They told you what they're accessing it, what more should you expect?